S. African Police Use Whips, Dogs To Disperse Protesters

JOHANNESBURG — Police Friday used whips, dogs and tear gas to disperse black demonstrators marking the anniversary of a 1960 police massacre in Sharpeville and another police shooting exactly 25 years later.

Authorities reported 13 people killed Thursday night and early Friday morning as a wave of anarchy swept South Africa`s black ghettos.

Dozens of memorial services were held around the country to commemorate the police slayings of 69 blacks at Sharpeville on March 21, 1960, and the killing of 21 blacks at Langa, near Uitenhage, on the same day last year.

In 1960, police opened fire on a crowd of about 5,000 men, women and children gathered outside the police station in Sharpeville, a ghetto about 40 miles south of Johannesburg. The shooting was the bloodiest single incident in the history of black opposition to white-minority rule in South Africa.

In 1985, police fired on about 20,000 people marching from Uitenhage`s Langa ghetto to a funeral in Kwanobuhle, about 600 miles south of Johannesburg.

In both cases, police said they fired when people in the crowd began to throw stones. Investigations were conducted after both shootings, but no action was taken against police.

In Sharpeville Friday, blacks went to the cemetery for a now traditional cleaning of the 69 graves and then held a memorial service in the ghetto. Large numbers of police looked on, but did not interfere.

In Langa, residents said police fired tear gas to disperse a group of people trying to hold a memorial service at the scene of last year`s slaying.

Witnesses said police fired tear gas in the white center of Durban and whipped about 300 black schoolchildren with 6-foot-long whips, known as ``sjamboks.``

Police ran after children who arrived in buses to attend a memorial service, beating them across the back, the witnesses said. Children who ran into shops to escape the tear gas were dragged out and thrown into police trucks, they said.

Saths Cooper, president of the radical Azanian Peoples Organization, said during the Johannesburg memorial service, ``We are going to take the struggle into the white suburbs.``

``A new era has come to South Africa and the ruling class is aware they can no longer oppress us,`` he said.